Category Archives: Pop Culture

I’ve been continuing with more of the Super Mario Maker Perlers over the last few weeks. Next post will be a ton of the Amiibo costumes pieces, and then I will take a break and make some bigger stuff again. I only wish the big stuff was as easy to iron as these were!

Here’s the latest batch of Super Mario Maker pieces for the big project: Mario from the original Mario Bros, Mega Man, and Maker Mario Amiibo costumes, and a Thwomp. The next set of these will be mostly set pieces and enemies. I’m glad that I found another game with this many sprites that I want to make. The plan is still to get the total count to around 150-200ish so I can cover most of an entire wall in my kids room; my 9 year old son really loves this game. =)

My 9 year old absolutely loves the new WiiU game Super Mario Maker. For months before it came out, he obsessed about the details, and several times insisted that it was already out, and I should go and buy it RIGHT NOW! Alas, we had to wait until it was released to us mere mortals, and not play testers that have been posting unauthorized YouTube videos.

The game came with an interesting artbook in place of a traditional game manual that showcased some of the level creation ideas as well as new sprites they have added to the game, and of course, the latter inspired me to make the above beadsprites. You will be seeing a bunch more of them over the coming weeks/months, as I plan on having a large mural similar to my Final Fantasy wall. My favorite of this batch are the alternate koopa troopas, and for those of you asking what Pac-Man is doing there, yes, he is in the game. =)

It’s been over a month since I have updated the blog here, and for good reason. This monstrosity is the result of taking a full bucket of 22k beads, separating them, and then making one single piece. There were 22,172 beads in total.

Here is the completed art. I wanted to make something with a simple repeating pattern that would be easy to put together, and Houndstooth is one of my favorite tessellating patterns. (shout out to whomever added Ricky from Trailer Park Boys to the Wikipedia entry).

I started by ordering the colors in ROYGBIV, and then alternating dark and light colors. I think I could have come up with a better color arrangement, but I didn’t want to pain over what the final finished product would be, but simply wanted to get it done.

Here are a few of the single boards I used to test and start it off.

I ran out of peg boards pretty quick, but fortunately, the local Joann’s had a sale going, so I was able to get everything I needed. The pattern quickly started to expand, and I was only able to estimate how big it would get.

There were way more of some colors than others. Almost twice as many greys as there were yellows.

I toyed with the idea of having the borders being rough, but shifted to having a solid grey border to frame it.

All the beads that remained were dumped back in the sorting dish, mixed back up, and placed around the border so that I could use all 22k beads.

It’s ready to get taped up at this point. (I later added my signature “D” in the corner.

It is all taped up and holes poked.

Just starting the ironing at this point. I knew it was going to take several hours to complete. I started ironing it like a normal “smaller” piece, but quickly determined that I needed to turn up the heat and get it done quickly.

Here is the first sign that things are going wrong.

As the tape and the beads started heating up, there was expansion and warping. I tried to keep heavy books on these parts as I was ironing, but they kept popping up.

The parchment paper usually stays flat on the beads when ironing, but this clearly wasn’t going to be the case for this one.

After the principle ironing, you can see how the masking tape wrinkles and pulls on the beads. With small scale stuff, this isn’t an issue.

The tape came off easily enough. Most of it was in one big ball.

Here are a few spots that came out ugly as it warped. From a distance, it’s not bad, but as an artist, I am hypercritical of my own work.

This whole project was quite the undertaking, but I knew the first time would be a challenge, and I would learn a lot from it. I plan on making at least 3 more big Perler bead pieces like this in the future, with different designs, and I am confident they will turn out much better.

I know I’ve said it in previous posts, but I really liked the Punch-Out!! arcade game. There was a coin-op arcade in my home town called “The Gold Mine” that had the first one that I had ever seen, and I was totally impressed that it had multiple screens (one above) with the characters portrait and stats.

Piston Hurricane was the second opponent in the game, and wasn’t that much tougher than Glass Joe was, but if you beat Mr. Dream, you could face a “smarter” version of him with blue instead of red gloves (same for Glass Joe). I had one bead fall over during the ironing process, but I was able to cut it out and repair. The trio of these guys looks super cool, now I just need to find a proper place to display them. =)

I’ve been super busy with moving into my new house, and haven’t had a ton of time to keep up with beading, but I am getting back into the groove. It was heartbreaking to take all the Perler art off the walls and box it up. The Final Fantasy wall was only up for 6 months before it was removed and boxed up, and now with the new place, I don’t know where to put it all. I’m thinking that I will build all new stuff for the walls in my house, and here is the first set!

Super Mario Kart came out the summer of 1992, when I was about to become a Senior in high school, so I missed it when it first came out ( I was busy with a summer job and partying ). I picked it up a few years later, though, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I didn’t notice until after I was done that I made a mistake in Yoshi’s hand, so I might make another one and use a lighter shade of green to match the Luigi. All eight were made in the race winning pose with the exception of Donkey Kong, because he is always a loser. =)

It’s not often that you see the background objects of videogames featured in art projects. I liked that the game Excitebike included things like cameramen and pit-crews in along the track. I really like the hard green borders they have, too.

I’ve been working on a ton of fridge-magnets for the reddit gift exchange, and for another project to finally sell some of my art for the people who keep on asking. =) I’ll be updating the page soon with a whole series on magnet stuff soon.

I really liked the Bowser sprite when I was checking some sprites forum, and right afterwards, I realized that I had yet to make a proper Donkey Kong. I love the iconic +++ of DK’s teeth, and the angry stomping pose. Bowser looks like’s he’s just told a joke, like a “amirte” pun.

I would love to see a proper game that re-introduces Donkey Kong as the villain, or a game where Bowser is the good guy. I’ve made a video with the ironing process of both of these guys that I will release in the next week or so, as well as some other tutorials, including making fridge magnets and keychains.